From Rural Poverty to Urban Deprivation? The Plightof Chinese Rural-Urban Migrants Through the Lensof Last Train Home

Na Li & Wei-Hsin Lin & Xiaobing Wang

Received: 28 June 2011 /Accepted: 8 February 2012 /Published online: 3 March 2012# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract China’s impressive growth has been accompanied by huge rural-urban divideand social sacrifice of many including rural-urban migrants. Reflecting on the documen-tary Last Train Home (2009) by Lixin Fan, this paper identifies and examines the life ofrural-urban migrants in China in terms of poverty-reduction, child-care, education andequal opportunities for a better life. By comparing the seemingly difficult and tragic lifeof the Zhang family against statistical facts, it shows that their suffering and struggles arecommon to most migrants. In essence, by creating an interactive dialogue between thefilm and the economic reality in China, this paper highlights the severe constraints on theChinese peasantry and discusses the implications of limited choices and social injusticetowards rural-urban migrants. It argues that the inequality in opportunities and the lackof social care for migrants has created huge social cleavage that not only reduces socialwelfare but may also impede further development.

Keywords China . Hukou system . Last train home .Migrant workers . Urban-ruraldivide

Introduction

During the past 30 years, China has witnessed significant economic growth with aprofound structural transformation from agriculture to industry. As part of thisprocess, the country has experienced the largest labour migration in history. Accord-ing to National Bureau of Statistics [11], at the end of 2008, China had 225 millionmigrant workers, that accounts for around one third of the total number of employed

East Asia (2012) 29:173–186DOI 10.1007/s12140-012-9175-2

N. Li :W.-H. LinCentre for Chinese Studies, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

X. Wang (*)Economics, School of Social Sciences and Centre for Chinese Studies, The University of Manchester,Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UKe-mail: Xiaobing.Wang@manchester.ac.uk

persons in China. The number of migrant workers who work outside of their home-towns totalled 140.41 million, more than 60 per cent of total migrant workers.

As China’s economic growth is largely supported by labour-intensive manufac-turing industries and labour is a crucial factor of production in this growth, it isnecessary to achieve a better understanding of the welfare status of migrant workers.

There have been extensive studies of the magnitude and dimensions of the rural-urban divide from an economic point of view (for example, [9, 10]) and many studiesof aspects of the hardship of rural-urban migrants from a sociological and anthropo-logical point of view [7, 21]. There have also been many newspaper reports and TVdocumentaries about the lives of Chinese migrants. However, there are very few filmsinvestigating the world of Chinese rural-urban migrant workers.

A recent documentary film, Last Train Home by Lixin Fan, allows us to look into thelives of a typical migrant family, the Zhang family, their struggle for money and a betterlife. The film provides a rare opportunity for systematic study of the widening rural-urban divide and the consequences ofmacroeconomic policies in ordinary people’s lives.

The Zhang family was trapped in poverty back in the 1990s, when the couple,Changhua Zhang and Suqin Chen had to borrow 50 Yuan to go to hospital for thebirth of their daughter Qin Zhang. They migrated in the hope of escaping poverty.However, working in a factory in Guangdong province, about 2000 kilometres awayfrom their hometown in Sichuan province, meant they had to leave their children athome with their aging and frail parents, and were only able to come home and stay fortwo weeks with their children and parents once a year.

Since its release, Last Train Home, has attracted a great deal of publicity and wonthe director critical acclaim. However, so far there has not been an academic studyexploring this film from the perspective of China’s economic policies and theirimpact on migrants’ lives. Almost all the published articles that set out to analysethis film are movie reviews which focus either on the grim reality the Zhang familyare confronted with or on the cinematography of the film. For example, New YorkTimes’ film critic, A.O. Scott [15], praises the film for its depiction of the “almostunbearably harsh conditions” of China’s migrant workers, while Roger Elbert [2]notes how difficult it is for the huge population of China’s poor rural citizens to “risefrom poverty.” Nonetheless, none of them mention the relevant economic policies towhich could be attributed the plight China’s migrant workers suffer. On the one hand,professional film critics’ accolades of Last Train Home confirm for us the hugeimpact its portrayal of Chinese migrant workers has on people outside academia,people who do not necessarily have much knowledge of contemporary China but feeldeep empathy for migrant workers as they witness the social and domestic conflictswhich rack and tear apart the Zhang family. On the other, these reviews unanimouslyend with reference to the melancholy tone the director sets for this film. Tragedies andconflicts have been unfolded, but a deeper reasoning and analysis of the causes arelacking. As the significance of Last Train Home has been recognised in terms of itsvivid portrayal of the social turmoil incurred by the problems of domestic migration,a more rigorous study of the film and the issues this film addresses is urgently needed.

In addition, while the film and many of the studies make a vivid presentation of thepersonal experience of struggle for a meaning in life, there is a need for a macroeconomic analysis that highlights the importance and the impact of the macroeco-nomic environment on unprivileged migrant workers.

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This paper first systematically investigates and reviews the multiple dimensions ofhardship for rural-urban migrants.1 By linking our analyses of each dimension to thescenes in the documentary film, Last Train Home, this paper tries to bridge the gapbetween formal academic study and appreciation of the film to enhance our under-standing of the issue. Second, by study the social discourse and the multidimensionaldeprivation together with special references to scenes in the film, we identify andinvestigate the reasons behind the plight of Chinese rural residents and rural-urbanmigrants and study the possible causes, bridging the gaps in our knowledge. Ouremphasis is on the macroeconomic environment of those migrant workers. It is veryeasy for one to blame these migrants as selfish or materialist. Without knowledge oftheir hostile environment it is impossible to understand that many of their seeminglyirrational choices and hardships are consequences of a macro reality over which theyhave no control.

In essence, through the lens of Last Train Home, this paper studies how the lives ofmigrant workers are affected by the macro policies that they cannot control. It unveilsa mechanism that traps them in a disadvantageous position that despite all theirstrenuous efforts they cannot escape, as well as the price they have to pay by leavingtheir children behind.

The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Rural Poverty and Barriers toMigration examines China’s economic policies concerning the welfare of ruralpeasants and rural-urban migrant workers; Migrant’s Unpalatable Choice of ChildCare investigates the unpalatable choice of child care for migrant workers; MountingPressure but Little Support in Education studies migrants’ dilemma and helplessnessin educating their children; followed by a demonstration of how little migrant workersbenefit despite their tremendous contribution to the economy in Fuel the Growth butnot Reap the Benefits. Conclusion concludes with some policy implications.

Rural Poverty and Barriers to Migration

Since the start of the reforms in 1978, China’s real GDP has been growing at an averageof around 10 per cent per annum, 200 million people have been lifted out of “extremepoverty,” according to National Bureau of Statistics [11]. This impressive growth innational income has, however, been accompanied by increasing income inequality andrural-urban divide. In 2009, there were still around 150 million people in China, almostexclusively in rural areas, living on less than US$1 a day in purchase power parity. Theyaccount for around 18 per cent of the world’s extremely poor [11]. For these destituterural dwellers, avoiding dire living conditions becomes a strong incentive to migrateto big cities, an incentive which is, however, thwarted by China’s Hukou system.

China’s Hukou System

One distinctive policy in China is the Household Registration (Hukou) system.Introduced in the 1950s, the Hukou system is a de-facto internal passport mechanism

1 However, this paper does not intend to make a detailed review of the large literature on rural poverty andrural-urban migration in China.

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preventing unauthorized movement between sectors. It created invisible walls andadministrative barriers that divided China into two worlds: those who live in theurban sector enjoy many rights and privileges while those in rural areas have farfewer political rights or opportunities to participate in or influence policies that willaffect them [9, 19].

The Hukou system contributed to different levels of development in urban andrural areas and severely reduced the extent to which rural people can migrate to urbanareas for a higher income and a better livelihood. NBS [12] shows that average urbanhousehold income is continuously around three times as high as the income of theaverage household in rural areas. This rural-urban income gap is among the widest inthe world [14]. Since the reforms began, although there has been a continualloosening of controls and restrictions on rural labour moving to cities, it still remainsextremely difficult for a rural person or household to become a permanent urbandweller, to obtain an urban Hukou.

According to NBS [11], there were about 140 million migrants living and workingin urban areas but not able to get urban Hukou and thus settle in cities.2 Thesemigrants do not enjoy the same rights as many local residents do and only work ascasual workers on a temporary basis. So they are given the appellation: the “floatingpopulation,” as they are rooted neither in the country nor in big cities. The Hukousystem makes them drift between rural and urban areas while it also seriously segmentsChina’s labour markets.

Segmented Labour Markets

The labour market in China has been highly segmented with migrant workerssuffering unfair discrimination. [10, 18]. Apart from a big income gap, the urbanand rural dwellers also face a big employment gap.

Having surplus labour is one of the social phenomena of China and the rural areashave operated as the sink of this surplus labour. The result is that urban areas enjoy anaverage income based on institutional wages that are substantially higher than theaverage rural income based on a subsistence level [10]. The fragile position of ruralworkers is further compounded by the fact that they lack alternative opportunities,information about alternatives and social security.

The agriculture sector in general has high levels of surplus labour and very lowmarginal productivity. The route out of this adverse circumstance is migration to theurban sector. Rural people are aware that better remuneration for their labour existsoutside agriculture but, without good education or necessary training, they havelimited opportunities to pursue non-agricultural activities. On top of these, the Hukousystem makes it even more difficult to migrate.

At the beginning of the reform, rural residents needed a permit to allow themto migrate to other areas in order to work and these were issued on a quota basis.On arrival in a new city, they were required to register with the police, and boththe permit and registration were subject to a fee. These fees were often veryhigh, posing an insurmountable barrier for some rural citizens and a deterrent formany [18].

2 Zhang’s family is one of them.

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Moreover, there are limited employment opportunities for rural migrants as a resultof city governments’ attempts to minimise unemployment for urban residents in orderto maintain social order [10:184]. For example, in the 1990s, State Owned Enterprises(SOEs) were required to give jobs to urban residents first and to employ a certainproportion of local residents despite the fact the migrants would have been preparedto work for a lower wage. In fact, the political and institutional arrangements giveurban residents privileged access to secure employment at above market-clearingwages and controlled the flow of peasants to the cities, allowing rural migrants to fillonly the vacancies that urban-dwellers did not want.

Past research has shown that labour markets in China have been highly segmentedfor many years [9]; Appleton et al, 2004; [10]. Despite the recent relaxation inregulations, barriers in the form of government restrictions on labour movementremain. Job-opportunities for labour are much greater in urban areas, where onlybetween 3.6 and 4.3 per cent were registered unemployed from 2000 to 2005 (NBS).In contrast, the number of surplus labourers was still around 50 per cent in rural areasin the same period according to the estimate of Kwan [8]. As Zhang [21, 22] shows,most migrants can only get unskilled jobs. They work longer hours, are not entitled toor able to afford to participate in the welfare system, such as medical insurance andpension schemes. Unemployed people with urban Hukou can claim minimum incomesubsidies and enjoy pensions and unemployment insurance. However, the situation isdifferent for those with rural Hukou, for whom none of these security nets haveexisted until very recently.

Despite the seemingly harsh conditions, many migrants do not want to go back tothe countryside nor to become farmers again [21]. All these inequalities Chinesemigrant workers have to live with when they choose to move to big cities whichcounter balance the aspiration to escape destitution in the countryside explain thebackground of the dilemma for a typical migrant family. The Zhang family in the filmis such an example.

Migrant’s Unpalatable Choice of Child Care

The relationship between the migrant workers and their children is the focus ofattention and the flashpoint of conflicts in this film, which also illustrates the negativeimpact of migration to urban sectors for migrant families. When migrant workershave children, they face an unpalatable choice of child care: whether they want totake children with them to the urban areas, or leave them at home in the rural areas.This section discusses the difficulties the migrants face concerning how to look afterand interact with the children that either move to cities or are left behind.

Take Children with them in Urban Areas

When children come and live with migrant workers in cities, there is not often anyproperly devised child care available to them. The film gives us a vision of how veryyoung children are often left unattended to play on busy roads or play and sleep infactories packed full of materials which pose great hazard to them. This is mostly due tothe fact that there is either no proper child care system available to migrants or nothing

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affordable to migrant workers even when the facilities do exist. According to the All-China Women’s Federation [1],3 the equivalent to a Ministry for Women, there are 19million migrant children living with their parents in the cities, in the adverse con-ditions which, as shown in the film, accentuate their status as second-class citizens.

Although under the constitution Chinese children are entitled to a state freeeducation, the reality is that millions of migrants’ children cannot be enrolled intothe schools in the cities they work and live because they do not have urban Hukouthere. Instead, many of these children have to attend private schools that run on fees,donations and voluntary teachers. These schools often have poor infrastructure andprovide education of low quality which results in disappointing academic performancecompared to that of city children.

Leave Children Back Home in Rural Areas

Aware of the difficulties of child rearing in urban areas, many migrant workers leavetheir children at home in the rural areas. This has, however, created another phenom-enon known as the “left-behind children” problem (liushou ertong), where one orboth of the parents work far from home and leave the children in the care ofgrandparents, other relatives, or alone. The causes of this situation include the factthat migrants themselves see their move as temporary - their rural Hukou status isfixed and they may have to return to the country-side if they become unemployed. Inaddition, low wages and high cost of living in urban areas means that it is tooexpensive to have their children stay with them. Finally, the Hukou restrictions makeit difficult for the children of migrant workers to attend schools in the urban areas.

Geographic barriers and economic barriers–the ticket price and the time they canafford not working are thus translated into an emotional barrier. Parents can onlyafford to come home and spend time with family for a couple of days in the year. Theemotional barriers make it difficult for parents and children to communicate and theyend up with very weak emotional ties, especially with young children.

By 2008, China had 140 million rural workers working away from their hometowns [11], creating a large number of left-behind children. The All-China Women’sFederation [1] estimated that there were about 58 million “left-behind children” agedup to 17 and about 40 million left-behind children under 14. Roughly 28 per cent ofall children living in the countryside are “left behind.” Among these “left-behindchildren”, nearly 53 per cent have both parents working away and among these, 48per cent of them live with their grandparents. A problem with this arrangement is thatthe adults taking care of these children do not receive good schooling and thus theyoften only cater for children’s basic needs but are incapable of providing educationalor emotional support. It is not unusual that since these children are left alone for muchof the time, there are frequent reports of child suicides and criminal activities that areattributable to negligence and lack of appropriate care [1].

3 The All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) is a mass organization dedicated to the advancement ofChinese women of all ethnic groups in all walks of life. The basic functions of the federation are torepresent and safeguard the rights and interests of women and promote equality between men and women.ACWF has a Department of Children (because Children were considered as a main factor in women’swelfare), who frequently conduct research concerning rural left-behind Children.

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This typical life is convincingly shown in the film. The two children in the film,Qin Zhang and Yang Zhang are among the children that had been “left-behind.” Astheir parents, Changhua and Suqin, were not able to afford to come home more oftenor stay more than two weeks a year, their connection with the children is establishedmainly by short conversations over the phone. As a result, the emotional link betweenparents and children becomes very tenuous. Originally, Qin and Yang live with theirgrandparents but, after the death of the grandfather, the aging grandmother becomesthe only senior family member Qin and Yang feel emotionally bonded to. However,as stated earlier, the poor education of the grandmother means she is unable to helpthe children with their study, relieve the stress they are put under at school or assuagethe loneliness they feel for being virtually abandoned in the countryside. Throughoutthe film, the audience is constantly presented with her views when she keepsreiterating the Confucian doctrines of the importance of filial piety and academicachievement.

Besides this ongoing sermonising, we can see that Qin and Yang are burdened withfurther agricultural work to help their grandmother after school. Even so, the audiencecan still sense that the relationship they have with their grandparents is much strongerthan that with their parents. This is further illuminated when Qin, after deciding toleave her hometown to work in the big city, goes down on her knees and sobs bitterlyin front of her grandfather’s tomb, as a way of bidding farewell. When her parentscome home for Chinese New Year and the mother states her intention of staying withthem, Qin scorns her declaration by assuring her brother that she is not serious aboutit because she only cares about the money she can make in the city. .The stark contrastbetweenQin’s affection for her grandparents and her parents foreshadows the irrevocablebreak down (one word) of this parent-child relationship.

Mounting Pressure but Little Support in Education

The gap between urban and rural education manifests itself through many aspects,including cost, level, quality and returns on education [6, 16]. Schools in urban areasreceive a large amount of support from the government while those in rural areas getstrikingly little.4 Rural residents are also required to contribute via taxation to themaintenance of the physical infrastructure of schools and the teachers’ salaries [5, 20].Many rural areas are so deprived that tax revenue is insufficient to pay for schools,and where they do exist, the schooling is of low quality [16, 20], not to mention thatsome families are not even able to send their children to school because they can notafford the tuition fees.5

In China, the second most important factor influencing a person’s educationalattainment or enrolment, after age, is whether that person lives in a rural or urban area[9]. In 2005, the percentage of senior-high school graduates from urban areas wasthree times higher than that from rural areas and the percentage of college graduates

4 It is noted that educational expenditure is dependent on rural households’ income [17], and the lack ofsufficient finance has led to a decline of the provision of education for many rural citizens [20].5 It should be noted that rural agriculture tax and fees were abolished in 2006 and tuition fees have beengradually reduced (or abolished in some areas) since 2008. However there may still be incidental costs toattendance at school which may be important.

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was four times higher (NBS). It has been estimated that if rural education levels wereto increase to those of urban areas, the overall rural-urban income gap would benarrowed by 25-30 per cent [14].

It should be noted that returns on education in China have been found to be lowwhen compared with other countries, but this is especially the case in rural areas [18].Low returns on education particularly in rural areas and especially for high schoolsmeans that there is little incentive for families to pay for their children’s education.All these factors amalgamate to trap many rural people in perpetual inequality wherepoor education destines them for taxing jobs with low wages.

In essence, rural Hukou people are seriously discriminated against by the govern-ment’s education policies. In rural areas, there is always a lack of human and financialresources for better education, while in urban areas, migrant children face institution-al discrimination due to their Hukou status. As a result, in general, those who are left-behind and those who move to cities with their parents are both noted for their pooreracademic performance and behavioural problems in comparison with their urbanpeers.

The hardship the migrant workers endure makes them entertain the hope that oneday their children could enter university and break from the vicious cycle of lowprofessional knowledge or skill and low-paid jobs. This is vividly shown from thewords the grandmother utters when doing her house chores: “if they want to leave thecountryside, they have to study hard.” so it is not surprising when Changhua andSuqin try to persuade Qin to go back to school after she drops out by admonishingher: “you should not be like us. You should go back to school!” Every time they get achance to talk with their children, the phrase “study hard” is reiterated stubbornly. Ittransfers to the mounting pressure that is sometimes too much for these children towithstand. To blame the children for not studying hard enough or doing well at schoolis a convenient outlet for the parents’ disappointment, especially if they are unawareof the detriment caused their offspring by lack of support from parents and the hugepedagogical gap between rural and urban areas. Children themselves are often thevictims of the education system in China but they are usually blamed for notachieving much academically by people who are not aware of the abject educationalresources in the country.

Hence, while education is regarded by many migrant workers as the only avenue toa life not clouded by poverty, there is certainly a huge chasm between the parents’perception of how their children can benefit from education and what these childrenactually experience at school. This kind of chasm also contributes to the misunder-standing and rift between Suqin and her children in the film. As Suqin indicates nearthe end of the film, there is no healthcare service, unemployment insurance orpension scheme devised for migrant workers like them. One way of dealing withthis lack of sound welfare system is to accumulate some precautionary savings but theattempt to save some money by Changhua and Suqin is seen by many, including theirdaughter Qin, as greedy and obsessive about money. While it is difficult for Qin, ateenage girl now at the age of being rebellious, to conceive the dire workingconditions her parents have to bear, the fact that the burden of farm work falls onthe grandmother and two young children merely makes her more resentful. Suqinnever stops reciting her aspiration for a better education for her children as the onlyway of pulling them out of poverty. While having dinner with Qin and her younger

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brother, the grandmother also admonishes them to study hard with the expectationthat, once they get better jobs and achieve success, the whole family can benefit fromit materially and thus live a less harsh life. Consequently, even though the oldergeneration tends to use material comfort as an incentive to galvanise their childreninto study, the younger ones, nonetheless, are too besieged by pressure, lonelinessand resentment against their parents to see what Changhua, Suqin, and the grand-mother really expect from them. In the end, education does not become the lifesaverthat salvages the migrant workers and their families from penury, but aggravates thecollision between two generations.

An even gloomier fact is that many migrant children would simply choose tointerrupt or even withdraw from their studies, the path Qin and many of her class-mates follow. It seems inevitable when we consider the fact that these children need towithstand the huge pressure their parents and the society put them under in the hopethat they can outperform others at school, without much help academically andemotionally from anyone, coupled with the gruelling farm work they have to do atthe end of a day’s classes.

When their daughter drops out of school, Changhua and Suqin’s hopes seem tofade. As they do not want the same story to repeat itself in their son, Suqin isconsidering moving back to the countryside to take care of him. However, this doesnot promise a rosier future either. Not only is there little she can do in terms ofhelping with his study, but she may also build up further pressure with high expect-ations for his performance. With their daughter following in their footsteps to becomeanother migrant worker and the remote possibility of helping their son with hislearning which they hope can lift them into a more comfortable life, Changhua andSuqin, and their children are very likely to end up being trapped in the vicious cyclethat enmeshes millions of migrant workers.

Fuel the Growth but not Reap the Benefits

As the film director, Lixin Fan, puts it, migrant workers “have contributed the most toChina’s prosperity but benefited the least” [3, 4]. This statement is attested by the factthat rural migrant workers are not able to gain an urban Hukou or the right to stay inurban areas as permanent residents even though they might have worked there fordecades, which is exactly what happens to the Zhang couple in the documentary whohave been working in the city for 16 years but are still not granted an urban Hukouand the right to settle in urban areas. Consequently, they are not allowed to enjoy thesame healthcare, education and social services as their urban counterparts. Were theyto have migrated to another country and worked there for the same period of timethey would have been eligible for full citizenship.6 The problematic social policies aredetrimental to the children of the migrant workers who cannot obtain urban Hukoueither since Hukou is inherited. Therefore, when Qin decides to work in the city too,like her parents, she can only be one of the casual labours, blocked from the

6 The UK, for example, has allowed permanent residency to be gained after legally working for 5 years, orlawful residence for 10 years. A full citizenship may be granted one year after the grant of permanentresidency.

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privileges only available for people with urban Hukou. The presence of the “secondgeneration migrants” clearly demonstrates the depth of discrimination against ruraldwellers in China. Many migrant workers are thus faced with a serious dilemma: theyare neither willing to return to the countryside because of the lower income nor arethey able to settle in the cities because of Hukou restrictions. The situation becomeseven trickier for the young migrant workers who grow up in urban areas, have noknowledge of farming and want to live an urban life.

To be denied urban Hukou causes another huge problem for the migrant workers,the largest annual human migration that takes place every Chinese New Year. Aspointed out earlier in the article, many migrant workers can only afford to travel backhome once a year to be reunited with their family, and most of them choose to embarkon this journey during the Chinese New Year holiday. The large number of migrantworkers and the considerable distance between coastal cities and their remote home-towns mean this journey is an incredibly arduous one. They have to be crammed intotrains and coaches for days, enduring stifling air and unsanitary public toilets beforefinally arriving home. When the transport goes wrong, all the problems are severelyaggravated. As the film shows, in 2008, the heavy snowfall in many cities in Chinacaused massive disruption to traffic, and left a vast sea of passengers stranded in therailway stations for days. The Zhang family did not avert this disaster. They stayed inthe station for five days before finally getting tickets, while others waited even longerand eventually had to give up.

While the limited capacity of the rail system is partly to blame, the root cause forthis pandemonium is the Hukou system and China’s industrial development policies.7

The special economic zones that enjoyed tax and policy advantages were almost all inthe coastal areas. These policies that favoured the coastal areas magnified thegeographic disadvantages of inland regions. The uneven development means peoplehave to travel thousands of kilometres away from home to find work opportunities.Only about ten years ago, China started the so called “Developing the West”movement but this has been limited to words as neither the investment and policytreatment by the central government is moving in favour of the West regions. Thisregional segmentation has compounded the vertical segmentation by the Hukousystem in the Chinese society.

The Hukou system means the migrant workers don’t have a home in cities,and they cannot settle in the place where they work. Chinese New Year is theonly time in a year when they can get together with the family they aredistanced from geographically and emotionally, and try to consolidate thefamily values most of them cherish, as demonstrated by one of the passengerson the same train with the Zhang family: “If the family cannot even spend theNew Year together, life would be pointless.”

Nevertheless, to reunite with one’s family does not mean to repair effectively thebroken relationship between Changhua, Suqin and their children. When we examinetheir interactions, it is evident that the affection the children should feel is reified by

7 In one of the scenes in the film, a frustrated man shows his anger towards a soldier who is enforcing lawand order in the railway station. He is angry that the soldier stopped him but what really separates him arethe barriers he cannot see. They are imprisoned by the macro policies that are invisible and much moredifficult to escape. It is those invisible institutional barriers, not the physical barriers before them leave themin frustration.

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the amount of money the parents send home and by the marks on their exam papers,the marks that are considered conducive to a better life brought forth by better jobsand higher incomes. While Qin and her brother are acutely aware of the weightmoney plays in their relationship with their parents, the older generation involuntarilydraws a parallel between the younger generation’s achievement and material afflu-ence. It is therefore predicable that they are inclined to show their affection towardstheir children in the form of their stressful concerns about the marks they get and theirranking among their classmates. The alienation between the parents and their off-spring climaxes in the verbal and physical row between Changhua and Qin, the fatherand the daughter. When she can no longer restrain her temper and swallow hisreprimand, she flares up and hurls a swear word, incurring the outburst of his rageand the hard blows from both sides. The purpose of making this gruelling journeyhome to be reunited with their family seems wrong. At the end of the film, seeingtheir relationship turn irretrievably sour, Changhua and Suqing can only let theirestranged daughter have her way.

When Qin was asked “is life good?” away from the countryside, she answers“to me, freedom is happiness”. However, the fundamental question that remainsunanswered is “free of what?” At the individual level, Qin gets away fromfamily controls, has some personal income, can do the things she wants to do,away from an environment that is always telling her to study hard. However,what she and many other young migrants cannot escape is the macroeconomicenvironment that they cannot control. It is estimated that more than half of theinequality of income in China is caused by inequality of opportunity [23]. Theseare factors over which individuals have no influence, factors like family background,region of birth and gender, and are different from individual choices such as individ-ual efforts or type of work [13]. This high degree of inequality of opportunity is partlydue to the Hukou system which has allowed economic advantage or disadvantage tobe transmitted from one generation to the next, thus making it very difficult to escapethe poverty trap.

In the final scene of the film, we see Qin put on a quite revealing dress and highheels to wait on customers in a rackety nightclub. She escapes from the backwater ofChina to, as she declares in front of the camera, “pursue her dreams,” and she plungesinto a world which seems to epitomise the decadence of capitalism. If one day shegets tired of working in such a hazardous place, without professional knowledge orskills, she can only shift to work in a laborious but low-paid job just as her parents do.Whatever she dreams to do, to end up being like her parents is unlikely to be one ofthe achievements she wants to boast of. However, this is to a large degree what thefuture holds for the majority of Chinese migrant workers. Without the amelioration ofrelevant policies and systems, the same kind of life is very likely to be repeated fromone generation to another.8

8 It should be noted that there have also been some improvements at the macro level in the past few years.Since 2008, the central government has started to introduce a basic health care (new rural co-operativemedical scheme, which covers 40 per cent of cost for in-patient) and a basic pension scheme for all ruralresidents. A recent small scale field study in Shaanxi province conducted by the authors in 2011 shows, thatthe abolition of agricultural tax, subsidies in rural education, the introduction of basic healthcare and apension scheme, along with the increase in wages, has given rural residents and migrants a sense ofimprovement and appreciation.

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Conclusions

Last Train Home demonstrates to the audience the fear of being left behind in theimpoverished and shrivelled countryside which instigates a vast number of ruraldwellers to migrate to cities. It also confronts the audience with the miserableworking conditions, the strained parent-child relationships and unpromising futurethe migrant workers have to face. Most important of all, it portrays contemporaryChina as a country dashing towards modernity while casting away its traditional waysof life. The dichotomy between modernity and tradition is illustrated by differentlifestyles in urban and rural China, as well as by different attitudes towards lifebetween two generations. China’s journey to development costs its citizens dear,exposed not only by different standards of living in rural and urban areas and bydamaged familial relationships, but also by the psychological transformation ofpeople’s attitudes towards life and happiness.

On a larger scale, the film urges us to re-examine the social fabric and thepsychological wounds caused by China’s economic boom and to ponder the possi-bility of repairing and curing them with the correct economic and welfare policies. Itraises our expectations for changes that could be brought about by abolishing theHukou system and improving social welfare. Once the flaws in China’s internalpolicies have been exposed and investigated, possible solutions to social injusticecan also be suggested.

There have been many micro level studies from an economics, sociology andanthropology point of view, but the macro picture is less researched. There is amajor gap in the literature that needs to be addressed. That is the theoreticalissues related to mechanisms that entrap rural residents and rural-urban migrants;the invisible net that they have very little control of, however hard they try. Inaddition, this paper provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis on theissues that the Zhang family and other migrants face, and serves as a bridgebetween popular culture and academe by connecting economics with film study,which shows another possible way of interpreting films.

It connects the life of an individual family shown in the film with millions of othermigrants, connecting the film with reality in China. It studies the rural-urban divideand the related social issues and the economic and social policies that pertain to thisphenomenon. The Hukou system which has been implemented to the detriment of themigrant workers for a long time has posed serious problems such as the wideningdifference between rural and urban life, the difficulty migrant workers experiencesettling down in cities, the lack of access to facilities and welfare for those whomigrate from the country to live in cities, the “left-behind children,” the brokenparent-child relationships and the family bond that has thus been ruptured. Migrantworkers have fuelled the country’s spectacular growth but not reaped much of thebenefit. This social injustice is too gross to be ignored.

With the number of migrant workers growing, a more worrisome sign is not onlythe current plight of migrant workers, but the macroeconomic environment that trapsthem in despair. For example, for many migrant workers, their dream is that theirchildren may enter university, which promises a better job, a higher income and thuspulls them out of the rut of an unskilled and badly-paid job. However, given the pooreducational infrastructure and the lack of support in rural areas, the prospect of the

184 East Asia (2012) 29:173–186

realization of this dream is slim. As a result, even if migrant workers are able toescape absolute poverty, it is very difficult for them and their families to rise from thelower echelon of society. The current limited social mobility is caused by the verysmall investment the government makes in education for migrant children. Thus,while well-educated people can usually occupy dominant social positions and gainmore political or economic leverage, the possibility for migrant children to earnwages any higher than their parents’ is faint and even less likely is it that they canclimb up the social ladder.

As there are still more than 60 per cent of China’s 1.3 billion population who arerural Hukou residents and with about 140 million migrant workers working in citieson a casual basis every year [11], there is a long way to go for China to be evenlyurbanized. The only sustainable solution is systematic reform of the social welfaresystem and abolition of the Hukou system. This would have to be carried outgradually to avoid urban slums and social unrest. On the other hand, fairer distribu-tion of budget and resources to urban and rural areas must be ensured in order toallow the countryside to thrive at a pace equal to big cities and to stem the largesthuman migration that takes place each year in China.

Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank the editor of this journal, the two anonymousreferees, James St. Andre, Jenifer Piesse, Nicholas Weaver and Yangwen Zheng for useful commentsand suggestions, Shuge Wang for her help with some of the data collection. Xiaobing Wang thanks theCentre for Chinese Studies Research Fund for financial support.

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